The Heart Of A Champion

I know, I know, I had a post here recently about putting sports to the side to create a clearer focus. However, the city of Chicago was essentially at a standstill this past Sunday from about 2pm on as the Bears defeated the Saints to go to their first Super Bowl in over 20 years. Even some of my mentors decided to reward their normal action habit with watching their hometown team punch their ticket to Miami. In my business, we tend to wall ourselves off a little from the thinking of the world, but sports tends to transcend, especially in areas dealing with leadership, overcoming, and victory.

All year long in Chicago, and actually, across the Country, the starting quarterback for the Bears has been maligned for somewhat inconsistent play. It is statistically true that Rex Grossman had a couple of games that were well below par. I mean, some terrible performances. However, his solid performances outnumberd his bad ones 3-1 and most importantly, he was sound in a first round playoff win and got the job done in the win that put them in the Super Bowl.

So many people will say, "but look at this game, and look at that game," and I agree - I prefer consistency over inconsistency. But, I'll take winning over losing regardless of how you get there. I don't care how good your defense is, if you quarterback is going to lose the game for you, it's going to happen. The Bears are 15-3 right now and although the defense has played a major part, they haven't been all of it. They've won by 26 in a shutout, as well as putting up 40 three times, and between 30-39 points four times. Only one of those eight games was closer than a touchdown. They've also got two other 10 point victories when they didn't light up the scoreboard. That's not all defense and running.

Here's my point: so many of us have been raised on the concept that you have to avoid failure. Most of us are in positions where if we make a mistake it can cost us our job. That we shouldn't even start something until we know where we might stumble. Now if you're a doctor trying to save a life, or a lawyer trying to keep an innocent person from jail, not making a mistake could be critical. But, what do you think that doctor was doing in medical school? You know there had to be some errors in the classroom or in the learning process. Same with law.

If you failed every homework assignment along your way to the final exam, but learned all of your mistakes along the way so that you passed the final exam, you'd probably still get an "F" in the class. Even though you now know what you didn't know when doing the original homework. We leave very little room for failing forward in this Country. Congratulations to you Rex Grossman, for failing forward into your first Super Bowl.

Intention Manifestation/Power Of Spoken Word

Every day I learn something new about life or business, I'm amazed at how little is taught in schools. Schools aren't bad places and I have nothing against them, but why was Chaucer force fed to me when I could have really used a book on positive mental attitude or the power of getting what you speak? I know that right off the bat there are people that immediately are tuning out, thinking to themselves, "That stuff doesn't work. That's just hocus pocus, foo-foo stuff." These are the first people to respond "not much" when you ask them "what's up?" or "what's going on?" and then complain about not being challenged enough and how their days sometimes drag. Your words are the architect of your future. If anything, there is proof of this in the negative sense. How many times do you hear someone say, "Forgive me, I'm horrible with names," and then have to ask you three more times what your name is? Do you really think superstar athletes like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods got to where they are by telling themselves they can't make it and that it would be extremely tough to even try? Of course not.

In this vein, I have read a few books on this concept. Hung By The Tongue is brilliant in it's basic breakdown of how powerful your words are. It's a short, easy read and is pretty inexpensive. What You Say Is What You Get is a little thicker, still inexpensive, but even more detailed in how to control your speech. What To Say When You Talk To Yourself is even more vital if you ask me, as it gets into concepts such as positive confession cards and really delves into what spurns your actions and results in life. I find it hard to believe that someone who doesn't believe in speech controlling life reading that book and not seeing truth. Just get it, read it, and you'll understand (btw, I make nothing if you buy any of those books as this blog is not officially affiliated with Amazon, nor the authors in any way.)

I've been working on putting this concept into effect in everything I do. Whether it's how I greet people in the morning - "not much" has become "everything is going on!" My response to "how are you doing" has become, "Great!" or "Top of the world!" I have to tell you that just doing that makes me feel better about my day. When bad stuff happens (being positive doesn't mean that problems disappear,) I've been working on not overreacting and measuring my response before I just blurt out in anger. It's so easy to have something stupid happen and to stand there saying, "this sucks!" I've been using these methods to write positive confession cards and a personal mission statement. I went out and actually bought some 3X5 cards and a black Sharpie and started putting positive phrases on the cards. Things like, "Smile, it's free!" or "I can relate to anyone." I can pull these cards out at any time while I'm driving and remind myself that "Everything is going to be great" and that I can "Win Today" (two other cards I have.) My personal mission statement/full positive confession talks about where I'm going, what I'm accomplishing, and who I'm becoming. It speaks the type of people that will come into my life, the type of family I will have and the type of impact that I plan on having.

Over at one of my favorite personal development sites, I recently came across something that seemed very much like positive confession. In none of my limited travels had I read much about intention-manifestation, but after reading a little about it, it seems to simply be the secular way of saying the power of the spoken word. I even joined the $1M experiment. Why not? What's the worst that happens? I know, you thought I'd say the worst, but we're talking about speaking positive right? So I'll put it this way - it doesn't cost me anything to participate and has a tremendous upside.

Are you speaking positive in everything you do? Not to get to "astral-plane-hippiefied" for you, but we are creatures of energy and we do produce both positive and negative. What makes you words exempt from being a viable participant? Why would we think we can say negative things and somehow have it not affect us? I use to be very self-efacing. It's easy to make fun of yourself because you don't offend anyone, right? Wrong. You offend you, subconsciously. It's not geeky to tell yourself you're a good person. In fact, it's necessary. 70% of the words you hear come from your own mouth. Why not program it with positive?